Why is prepping seemingly dominated by men? Ah, women don’t care about protecting their loved ones! No….that’s not it. Oh I know; women are incapable of forethought or planning! That hypothesis dies in a single word: Weddings. Here’s one real truth: Some women are driven away from the idea of prepping by Mansplaining.
Salty and I talk it over in this podcast:
What is mansplaining?
Suppose a man wants to impart some information to a woman. He charges in to a full explanation, without consideration of such unimportant details as whether she actually cares to hear about the topic at the moment, or what she already might know about it, how it relates to her in particular, or even if she knows more about it than he does. He just gives His understanding, like a bad teacher lecturing a class who’ve long since tuned into their phones. She’s been mansplained to.
See her expression? This is how I feel when I’m the target of mansplaining.
You might be mansplaining if:
- You’re a man and she’s not. For reasons shown below, this is a one-way street. (You’ll get no argument from me that women have some of their own really annoying conversational approaches).
- You’re explaining something without considering the interests or knowledge of the woman.
- It comes across as condescending or superior. If the first two conditions are met, this one comes up pretty easily.
Why is mansplaining a problem?
When I get mansplained, the result is pretty predictable — and it’s not just me; from hearing other women vent I know I’m pretty typical here. In fact, the concept was first explained in this book (clicky).
When I get mansplained to, any interest may have had in the topic is washed away in a flood of annoyance. Whatever this guy is yammering about is clearly Important Stuff for Men, and I got no time for that. If he’s telling me why it’s important to be prepared for emergencies by doing *insert whatever here*, I can can instantly come up with 27 reasons why that’s a terrible idea.
Why is mansplaining even a term?
Women — all women I’ve ever known — get mansplained to. A lot.
It’s not because men are jerks, and in most cases it’s not because the men really think women are inferior beings who need a man to explain all important concepts. It’s a cultural thing. Our culture expects men to value having dominance and being leaders. It rewards them for displaying self-confidence and displaying what they know. Growing up in a culture like ours, it’s no wonder men tend towards putting their own explanations forth early and often.
Just because women are culturally ‘used to it’ doesn’t make it pleasant though. No one wants to feel less capable, less knowledgeable, or lacking in judgment or wisdom. Even fewer people enjoy having someone else cast them in those roles. (Yeah, I know, that’s a mathematical impossibility. Hyperbole provided for emphasis.) As a result, we get turned off, a lot, in response to mansplaining.
How can you avoid mansplaining?
Let’s say you want to share the idea of prepping, or some more specific information, with a woman. Since the point is not to drive her in the opposite direction, you’ve decided to be careful to avoid mansplaining. How do you make that happen?
First, when you introduce the topic look for signs that she’s got any interest. If she’s not, might as well talk to a brick wall anyway. If it’s borderline, try to link it to something she’s more interested in. For example, if she objects that End Of Civilization scenarios are too implausible to worry about, perhaps ask about more minor disasters she’s dealt with or thought of and go from there.
Find out what she already knows about the topic. This makes for a more pleasant and useful conversation, keeps you from putting your foot in your mouth if she Does happen to know a good bit, and maybe even lets you learn something too.
Finally, keep in touch with your conversation partner, including paying attention to body language. People like to have conversations, not be lectured at. Also, people learn a lot better when they can relate what they’re learning to their previous experience.
More on prepping with female partners
This isn’t the first time we’ve touched on the topic, because we here at 3BY are convinced everyone is better off the more people prepare; and we are convinced that the mansplaining issue is a serious turnoff for some potential preppers. In this post and this one we talk about Women and Guns, and in this post, this one, and this one about Reluctant Spouses in general. (Sometimes reluctant spouses are men… but often not.)
I think your comment about ‘culture’ is correct, but you’ve picked modern culture. To understand this, IMO, you have to go back quite a bit farther; to very early Man (not the least bit PC here), where men were hunters and protectors, and women provide the home with the survival of both the species through reproduction, and did the support work to keep her protector in the game.
Up until recently, those roles hadn’t really changed for millennia. Now, folks seem to think most women can take on those men’s roles that require the strength and endurance that comes from having testosterone (natural testosterone), and that men can somehow take over the reproductive roles and be the nest-makers.
Getting upset about mansplaining is a social construct based upon the idea that the sexes can swap roles with impunity on a grand scale. I don’t think that Mother Nature cares much about ‘social constructs’. The Progressive-led war on men is not going to end well.
I agree, RayK, with your basic premise that the traditional roles are a big part of the source of the problem. There’s an assumption in there that doesn’t seem right to me though: The fact that the man is doing the protection and hunting (women provided a whole lot of the food through gathering then farming, but people have always valued the meat more) does not mean he’s the person who knows all the things and is smarter and so should do all the explaining. It means he has more *power* in the relationship, and that has been used as a way to push the notion that he must be considered right and smarter as well. Mansplaining is subconsciously about power.
Nor does ‘how it was historically’ rule our lives today — influence absolutely; rule no. Cultures evolve quickly, biology evolves but more slowly.
The power dynamic has changed. I am no physical match for most men; but given that I can carry a handgun now I require less physical protection. I can certainly acquire my own meat if I wished it while still taking care of hearth and home. Should then women continue to accept being subordinate in most situations just because their ancestors had reason to accept that position? No. Every species, including humans, continually changes both culture and biology to suit their current circumstance. Those changes create points of friction. Objecting to mansplaining is just a piece of our current friction related to current changes. It’s no attack on men unless you start with the assumption that men get to have more power and respect in all areas of life just because they’re men, and I don’t think that’s a good starting point. I am happy to defer to Salty in many areas — because he has more knowledge, expertise, and judgment in those areas. Pretending that he knows more about medicine or gardening than do I would be counterproductive; it would waste some of the skill and knowledge of our partnership. That’s the worst thing about mansplaining: Assuming one gender is always in charge or right wastes potential.
Thanks for your comments, Ryak, you make some interesting points.
Here’s something I’d like to throw out there for everybody to think about.
We are a prepper website, serving the prepper community. What is our stated goal? To get more people prepping, and to help those who are already prepping do it better.
Since our goal is to increase overall preparedness, one of the first things we need to do is to get people on-board with the whole idea of prepping. We need to communicate what we are doing, who we are, what we stand for, our goals, our concerns and yes, even our fears, to other people in a way that attracts them to our point of view, not in a way that repels them.
That’s what I am talking about here. Mansplaining is repellent to a large part of our population… and our goal is attracting, not repelling people.
If we can change the TONE but not the message, that’s a win.
I’m not opposed to the INFORMATION, what I am opposed to is the communcation of that information in a way that makes others walk away instead of drawing them in.
As a historian, I understand what you are saying, but this is indeed 2018 and we have to communicate in a way that people in 2018 will react positively to.
Just my 2 cents 🙂
I agree with most of your points, and that positional power has a history of being abused, that the powerful do not always have the best answers, and that the advent of the modern firearm has put women on par with men for self-defense as well as hunting.
My only rebuttal (not refutation) to your cultural comments is that, while changing culture may (or may not) be a desired thing, forcing change at a pace too fast for the biological change to keep up is not going to give the best results. The admonition, be careful what you wish for, is very much at work here.
I appreciate the conversation, RayK. As a biologist, I see (in many species actually) that behaviors often evolve far faster than the underlying genetics. It turns out that a given set of genes is often pretty flexible in how it can be expressed. They are not the chains that we once imagined. If humans were chained to the behaviors that were successful for our small-group, hunter-gatherer ancestors, our current world would be very different indeed – different than we see it I mean; it would look a whole lot like the world those ancestors lived in. Incompatibilities between genetic programming and culture do cause problems, but not nearly as big a problem as being locked into one set of behaviors would have been.